


The First to Know

by vulcan_slash_robot



Category: Marvel 616
Genre: JARVIS is a good bro, M/M, art in the second chapter, i might have to make one, i want a cap-ghan now, if by art you mean a photo of a thing i made, the cap-ghan, the trouble with forks, utterly pointless nonsense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-27
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-24 15:35:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13814181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vulcan_slash_robot/pseuds/vulcan_slash_robot
Summary: A brief side scene that I am convinced took place near the end of Chibisquirt's"Stars Fading, but I Linger On, Dear"which is magnificent and you should absolutely read it first.Steve just wanted his favorite blanket, how was Jarvis supposed to know?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ChibiSquirt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChibiSquirt/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Stars Fading, but I Linger On, Dear](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8578690) by [ChibiSquirt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChibiSquirt/pseuds/ChibiSquirt). 



> Just in case you've ignored my advice about reading the proper story first, here's the broad strokes: if you have a soulmate, you sometimes enter a dreamscape while sleeping, which will be based closely on the real-life place where you'll someday meet them. Other people will be there with you in the dream, one of them is your soulmate. Steve spends a very long time in his dreamscape, believing himself to be dead the entire time. ~~It's utterly tragic and turns out beautifully~~ Hilarity Ensues.

Edwin Jarvis stepped back and surveyed the contents of the sink with a sigh. He’d performed any number of unusual, complex, and startling tasks and errands since the Master had invited his little troupe of world-savers to the mansion, one would think he’d be used to it by now. Not that he minded, he was rather fond of them all, and they were so  _good_ for young Tony--not that it wouldn’t be even better if he’d hurry up and trust them with the truth about who was fighting beside them, but, there, that was an old argument, and one he certainly wasn’t going to win when the Master wasn’t even present.

The thing was, even with all he’d done for Tony’s odd friends so far, this was, still, a very unusual load of laundry. A  _tricky_ one. Mostly leather, very old leather, badly ripped, deeply stained, and it had apparently been  _soaking in sea water_  for most of a century? It was highly doubtful this mess would ever be wearable again, but he could do his best. Maybe it’d be passable for display purposes eventually, at least. Certainly the Captain wouldn’t actually need it, once Tony could spend a bit of time in his shop turning out a replacement. Or twenty. 

For now, all he could do was soak it a while--not in water, good lord, it’s had enough of that--but let it sit and absorb the approximately fifteen gallons of leather conditioner Jarvis had optimistically smeared on it, and see how far that went. Then other plans could be made.

With that arranged, Jarvis was slightly at a loss, for the time being. Their newest guest had been situated in his new rooms, fed, and directed to some useful common areas, but Jarvis didn’t feel quite right retiring for the evening with a newcomer left idling about the place. It didn’t feel hospitable, somehow, especially when their guest was someone he knew the Master held in such high regard. For goodness’ sake, Tony’d been sleeping with an enormous crocheted afghan in the shape of the Captain’s shield since the boy was, what, six years old? Perhaps less? He’d stopped for a time, as young boys do when they feel the need to act less young, but once the Old Master had been gone a while, the blanket had quietly resurfaced, and Jarvis had carefully not mentioned it. 

Probably best not to bring that up with their new arrival on his  _first_ day, though.

Well, anyhow. There was always a bit of something to do somewhere in the house if one only looked. Jarvis made up his mind to pop into the library and check up on their guest, if he was still there, and then find something to busy himself with. No need to crowd the man. 

Of course, that plan went perfectly just up until the exact moment that Jarvis stepped into the library and laid eyes on the Captain. 

He paused in the doorway, mouth open, meaning to ask, “Is there anything I can fetch for you, sir?” but never managing a word of it. Because there was Captain America, nestled warmly in a plush library chair, with a cup of tea, wrapped from shoulders to toes in _an enormous crocheted afghan shaped like his shield_. 

Jarvis stood stupefied in an utter panic for no less than forty-five seconds, at the minimum. Had he somehow left it out, in this room?! Tony would be appalled. No, that was impossible, it never left Tony’s room, the team would see it, he’d never live it down, so he kept the dear old thing to himself. Had it been on Tony’s bed, then, perhaps with the door cracked? Maybe the Captain had glimpsed it, and thought it amusing...?

The other option, of course, Jarvis realized as his chagrin faded into suspicion, was that the Captain had invited himself into Tony’s room and had a good look around, gleefully retrieving this prize with which to intentionally torment the Master. All the old propaganda painted him as a good man, of course, and he’d seemed a decent sort of fellow so far, but they didn’t really know him, did they? It was entirely possible that he had a mean streak a mile wide, and it’d been far too hasty of the team to welcome him so quickly. 

“Oh dear,” Jarvis eventually managed, clearing his throat slightly. He tried to keep his tone neutral, but a hint of accusation slipped through. “Wherever did you find  _that_ old thing?”

The Captain froze, hiding a cringe behind his tea, and Jarvis heard him whisper something that sounded suspiciously like “busted”, but surely wasn’t, that would’ve been far too modern of him to say. He lowered his tea, and stared into it for a moment, before setting his shoulders and turning to face Jarvis properly. 

“I think you and I will get along better if we have a little chat, Mr. Jarvis,” he said, squarely meeting the old butler’s gaze. 

There were nerves under that confidence, and some of Jarvis’s suspicions receded, just a bit. He took a seat, on the sofa across from the Captain. After a few moments of pointed silence, the Captain took the hint, and began.

“I’d ask if you can keep a secret, but I know I don’t have to,” the young (young?) man said softly, eyes on his tea. “I know I overstepped, getting the blanket without asking, but I couldn’t have asked without explaining, and, well, I was really hoping Tony would be the first one to find out.”

His lips quirked up into a smile, but his eyes were strangely sad. “I need us to get off on the right foot, though, because you’re very important to Tony, and that’s...that means everything.”

Jarvis narrowed his eyes. “You haven’t even met Mr. Stark yet, why are you saying this?”

That sad-eyed smile finally turned up to face him. “I met Tony Stark for the first time when he was sixteen years old. I  _know_ he’s told you about the ghost in the library. The soldier? Flew a plane into the ocean at the end of World War II, like a big idiot?”

Oh. Dear god. 

That smile got a bit more knowing. “The first time we spoke, I was sitting on top of the shelves, reading, and he came over to bother me. I wasn’t as nice as I could have been, I’m afraid, played a bit of a trick on him,” he paused to breathe, eyes far away. “I think I broke his poor heart right in half, that day. But he kept coming back. He still reached out to me, even knowing I was already dead.”

“You...you’re not dead,” Jarvis breathed. This was impossible. This was absolutely, ludicrously, impossible. But then, what had the Master done lately that wasn’t?

“I’m not dead!” The Captain chuckled, with quiet enthusiasm. “Believe me, there is nobody who could possibly be more surprised by that than I was. Even Tony. I’d been in that library for almost  _sixty years_ , Jarvis. I was pretty sure things weren’t going to change.”

“Bless my soul...” Jarvis muttered. 

The Captain leaned forward, extending his hand. “Steve Rogers. Pleased to finally meet you.”

“Edwin Jarvis,” Jarvis offered, somewhat unnecessarily, returning the handshake. There was strength behind that man’s grip, but the Captain--Steve?--apparently felt no need to use it on him. 

“Thank you,” Steve said firmly, not letting go of his hand, staring him intently in the eye. 

“For what?”

“For looking after him. For being someone he could count on, when I couldn’t even offer him a damn  _hug_.”

“Oh,” Jarvis’s breath caught at that earnest statement. He let his gaze drop, and carefully withdrew his hand, suddenly swamped by old guilt. “I could have done more,” he admitted. Memories of things he hadn’t dared to stop flooded in, accusing and sharp-edged. “I wish--”

“You did what you could,” Steve, Captain America, cut him off with absolute certainty, brooking no argument. “I knew Howard. If you’d been openly defiant, he would’ve just fired you, and found someone Tony couldn’t turn to at all. You helped, Jarvis. You helped so much.”

“...thank you,” What else could he say, to all that? Jarvis shook himself. “Goodness, what am I saying, letting this be the least bit about me, you’re alive! After all this time, Master Tony’s doomed soulmate is alive and home! What can I do for you, surely there were things you were missing in that state, anything I can provide?”

“Mostly I’m really really enjoying this chair right now,” Steve answered gleefully, tucking his feet up into it, entirely off the floor. “And forks!” he snatched the teaspoon--no, dessert fork, that was most definitely a dessert fork--out of his cup and held it up triumphantly, with a slightly manic gleam in his eye. “Forks are great!”

“For...tea?”

“For EVERYTHING.”

Jarvis laughed. “Well, who am I to argue?” He gestured at the blanket. “Are you finding the house a bit cold?”

“Ah,” the happy expression on Steve’s face flickered. “Yes and no. Mostly, uh, I sorta...oh god, Jarvis, he’s going to be so mad at me.”

“Why  _ever_ would you think that?”

“ _Because_ , for years now he’s been showing me his favorite Cap comics and sitting next to me wrapped in a Cap-ghan and making grand speeches about how the Avengers are a good idea because ‘it’s what Captain America would do, I know it’ and I...” he held up his hands, helpless, gesturing vaguely at himself.

“I see. And why have you not told him?”

Steve took a moment to think it over. 

“Well, firstly because it was incredibly classified,” he started, “I’m not sure what I thought could possibly come of it at that point, but treason is treason. And then, I guess, it would’ve been awfully mean, wouldn’t it? Assuming he believed me, I’d just be adding more awful things to the situation. ‘Hey Tony, know how your soulmate’s dead and trapped in a library and can’t touch you? Well, he’s also your favorite superhero! Who’s dead and trapped in a library and can’t touch you! Forever!’“

“But you are prepared to tell him, now?”

Steve nodded sharply, staring at the floor. “Fixed the classified part. Fixed the dead part. Now I just need him to come home and show me his  _actual face_  so I can stop pretending to believe he’s his own body guard.”

“Oh dear. Yes you would be in on that, wouldn’t you.” Tony had been loathe to go into the details of his time in captivity, even with Jarvis, but he’d had plenty to say about how his few trips to the dreamscape from there had given him strength, not to mention some pretty decent escape advice from his ghostly soldier. “But you’ve hit it on the head there, Captain. If anyone knows what it is to keep a secret identity, it’s our Tony. He will understand.”

“I hope so.”

“If he does not I shall send him to bed without his supper,” Jarvis promised primly. “And if that is not sufficient he shall be forced to write ‘I live in a very elaborate glass house and must not throw stones’ five hundred times.”

Steve laughed, and the conversation devolved into a list of increasingly improbable chores and reprimands Tony would have to suffer to atone for being anything less than ecstatic to properly meet Steve. Although Jarvis did allow that asking Iron Man to wash the outside windows on the upper stories might not be an idea entirely without merit (the apron reading “I have to be nice if I want nice things” would not likely be necessary in real life). It was all utterly silly, and went on for nearly an hour, interspersed with a good deal of reminiscing about things that were common when Steve was last awake and when Jarvis was a boy. Eventually, Steve cocked an ear toward the front of the mansion.

“Sounds like the team is home, unless you know someone else who’s twenty feet tall and has a friend that flies around on jet boots,” he observed, smiling. 

“Oh, drat! I’d all but forgotten, they’ll be ravenous after such a late outing.” Jarvis hopped to his feet and scurried out to the kitchen. “Don’t let me drag you out of that nice chair, but of course you’re welcome to pull up a bar stool in here, if you’d rather.”

Steve stood at the entry to the kitchen, beaming. “I haven’t cooked a hot meal in a real kitchen since 1943.”

“Well, then, pull up a stovetop, instead.”

They worked shoulder to shoulder, whipping up a quick soup and some rather stunningly tall sandwiches, until voices could be heard approaching from the direction of the lab stairs. Steve bolted at once, hiding just out of sight in the library, until the proper moment presented itself. 

When Tony and Wasp arrived in the kitchen, Jarvis was there to greet them.

When Tony shook his soulmate’s hand, Jarvis was there to watch the understanding dawning in his eyes.

When the boys fled upstairs on a thin pretense, clearly eager to be alone together, Jarvis shook his head and smiled, and did his best to distract poor miss Van Dy--Wasp, that is, and Giant Man, with dinner. 

And for years after, whenever Jarvis served the Captain a hot drink, be it tea, coffee, or cocoa, it always came with a dessert fork in place of a teaspoon. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I did the thing. It's massive.
> 
> (Shoutout to my cat's nose poking out from under the bed.)

**Author's Note:**

> Because Tony once told Jarvis "If I ever get to meet my soulmate, you'll be the first to know" and I took that Very Literally.


End file.
